For almost 30 years, Mike Ross has seen the industry from a number of vantage points: President/CEO Acredo Technology, Inc., COO of Esna Technologies., President/Owner/Partner of Aculab, USA., Vice President Sales and Marketing/Director/Owner/Partner of Rhetorex., Vice President of Sales and Marketing/Owner/Partner of Dialogic Inc. Currently Mike is heading up his latest effort as COO/Director of the Americas for 4PSA, a company that is focused on Cloud Computing technology and services for the Telecommunication Industry.

Russ Klein has over 20 years of experience in entrepreneurship and technology management. Mr. Klein has held leadership positions in companies spanning multiple verticals. Currently, as VP of IT Research at Aberdeen Group (a leading Boston-based technology research firm), Klein specializes in infrastructure transformation, agile business process, knowledge discovery, sensor-based data capture systems, real-time speech analytics, and biometric security. His most recent research on the ROI of cloud computing, contact center outsourcing, and unified communications has been widely acclaimed. Check out the IT Decision-Makers Technology Toolkit at www.aberdeen.com.

Chad Hart is a solutions marketing manager for Acme Packet, the leader in session border control solutions. He is responsible for supporting the company’s strategic analysis and Over-the-Top and Cloud Communications marketing programs. Formerly Chad was Product Marketing Manager for Empirix, a test and monitoring vendor serving VoIP and IMS vendors and service providers where he authored, Ensuring a Quality IMS Experience - A Practical Guide to Testing and Monitoring IP Multimedia Subsystem and Services and was a regular speaker and author on IMS and VoIP network quality. Prior to Empirix, Chad was Director of VDC’s Telecom Practice where managed and authored VDC’s groundbreaking IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS): Global Market Demand Analysis. His other published work includes VDC’s Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) Enabling Technologies and SS7 and VoIP Infrastructure Equipment. Chad has a BSEE and MBA from Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

Mr. Bumbernick has more than 12 years of senior management and entrepreneurial experience in telecommunications, IT and managed services. Since 1994, Mr. Bumbernick has been involved at executive levels of leadership and Boards of Directors within the technology and telecommunication sectors. Since 2003, Mr. Bumbernick has been focused on emerging VoIP technologies with the success and tremendous growth of Alteva. Mr. Bumbernick has been recognized by Smart Business Magazine as an expert in the emerging technology of VoIP. William has been published in leading publications on converged voice services and is also a recognized presenter at leading trade shows and conferences including:Broadsoft Connections 2008IT Expo East 2009The HD Communications SummitNational Disaster Reconstruction Expo 2009IT Expo West 2009VON 2009Supercomm 2009Broadsoft Connections 2008Acme Packet’s Interconnect 2009Under Mr. Bumbernick’s leadership, Alteva has rapidly evolved from a startup founded in 2003 to the leading hosted IP communications company on the East Coast. As a pioneer in managed or hosted IP telephony, Alteva is transforming the telecommunications industry with new products, services and an unequaled drive towards innovation. Mr. Bumbernick has attracted top talent from across the country to Alteva for his “change the world” mentality. Alteva offers the opportunity to excel in a performance-driven, fast-paced, and competitive atmosphere. Mr. Bumbernick has assembled leaders that inspire, motivate, and innovate and has created a corporate philosophy that incorporates community involvement into its fabric.Mr. Bumbernick has a proven track record of understanding customer and industry needs and converting them to business and product requirements. He has been recognized by industry leaders such as Broadsoft specifically for his ability to ‘imagine’ solutions for business needs and see the life cycle through to market availability in record timeframes. Additionally, he has successfully elevated Alteva as a leader in advanced communications capabilities.

Marc Fribush has been involved with computer telephony since 1995. He was a co-founder and COO of Encounter Technologies, an ATDC (www.atdc.org) member company focused on integrated web-telephony software applications for the social networking marketplace. Encounter was acquired by The Generations Network (formerly MyFamily.com, Inc.) in April 2006. From 1999 to 2003, Fribush was a Senior Product Manager at Yahoo! working with streaming media and telephony products for the investment banking market. Prior to Yahoo!, he was Director of Product Management for Intellivoice Communications, a speech recognition application developer for wireless carriers. Prior to Intellivoice, he held account management positions at Genesys Telecommunication Labs and Dialogic Corporation. Fribush holds a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering and a Master of Business Administration from the University of Maryland.

An accomplished corporate executive, serial technology entrepreneur,company advisor, and public speaker, Dean Parker is the founder andCEO of Callis Communications, the leading provider of unified cloudcommunication services for Tier 2 markets throughout the Gulf Coast.Under his executive leadership, Callis has made the Inc. 500|5000 listfor the past four consecutive years and been awarded as the 2011 SmallBusiness of the Year, in addition to receiving numerous other awards.With his compelling influence, Dean currently serves on severalprominent boards, some including Vice Chairman of the IT Network forthe Young Presidents’ Organization and Chairman of Development forthe University of Mobile and also participates in leadershipopportunities such as MindShare and the Leadership Alabama ClassXXII. Dean is also a co-founder of the Cloud Communications Alliance.

Dr. Moshe Yudkowsky has twenty years of experience in product development in high-technology industries.

Dr. Yudkowsky is president of Disaggregate, , a consulting company that helps companies create, understand, and apply revolutionary technology. He is author of The Pebble and the Avalanche: How Taking Things Apart Creates Revolutions (Berrett-Koehler, 2005). He specializes in consulting and education for a particular high-tech industry: speech recogntion, text-to-speech, and biometrics.

Dr. Yudkowsky received his Ph.D. in Physics from Northwestern University; he joined Bell Laboratories in 1987. At Bell Labs, Dr. Yudkowsky worked on several large-scale deployments of speech recognition applications, with responsibilities ranging from architecture to DSP development to application design.

Dr. Yudkowsky joined Dialogic Corp. in 1996 to nurture speech development (Dialogic was purchased by Intel in 1999). Dr. Yudkowsky left Dialogic/Intel in 2002 to found Disaggregate.

Dr. Yudkowsky was editor of the ECTFs Automatic Speech Recognition Task Group for over a decade, and served as Technical Chair of the ECTF in 2001. He was a board member of AVIOS, a national organization that promotes pseech technology. In 2002, he became the first Chair of the Midwest Speech Technology Association, an organization of speech technology professionals.

Larry brings 15 years of sales, marketing and business development leadership experience in emerging communication technologies. Through a variety of engagements, Larry has gained a deep understanding of distribution strategy and implemented channel models that have succeeded in markets ranging from small business through to large enterprise. Based in San Francisco, Larry has filled business-critical roles and provided direction to technology companies ranging from telecom to web-based B2B services. Larry is a native of Montreal, Canada and has been based in the Bay Area for the last 10 years.

Adam Swidler is a Senior Manager in Google’s enterprise division, responsible Google Apps security and privacy. Adam came to Google via the acquisition of Postini. Prior to Postini Adam was the Director of Product Management for Vendavo, in charge of the Pricing and Margin Management applications suite. Adam was also with Ariba as the Sr. Manager of Product Management for Arbia’s eProcurement solutions. He has over 20 years of experience in Enterprise IT solutions with the last 5 focused on IT security. Adam has spoken at numerous industry conferences including RSA, Gartner Security & Risk Management Summit, CSI-SX, ICCS and SecurityForum. Adam attended Fordham University and graduated Cum Laude with a BA in Economics and Mathematics.

Passionately engaged with how technology can positively affect quality of life, Alec wants to see five-year plans on the market in one. A double-decade veteran of product management and marketing, he spent nine years at Microsoft where he helped launch Windows 95, the first two versions of Internet Explorer, the Universal Plug and Play initiative, the push into home markets, opt-in email marketing and what might well go down in history as the very first direct email list ever.

Mr. Shriver is vice president of Product Management for IP and Data Services at Level 3 Communications. In this role, he is responsible for product strategy and development across Level 3’s VPN, Ethernet and Managed Services product families.

Mr. Shriver joined Level 3 in 2003 and has since held leadership roles in Business Development, Product Management and Delivery.

Prior to joining Level 3, Mr. Shriver spent six years at XO Communications culminating in his role as director of Product Management for Internet, Data and Security Services.

Mr. Shriver holds a bachelor’s degree from Baylor University.

Thomas McCarthy-Howe has over 20 years experience in the design and development of next generation communications equipment. Thomas is an active software developer, concentrating on Voice Mashups and their supporting technologies such as Ruby, Rails, Adhearsion and Web as Platform architectures. In 2007, Thomas won the first O’Reilly Emerging Telephony Mashup Contest with his “After Hours Doctor’s Office”. In 2008, Thomas was listed among the most influential voices in VoIP. He also won the VON Magazine Innovator’s Award and he won the first Broadsoft Mashup Contest with his “Disaster Dispatcher”. So far in 2010, Thomas has hosted the first cloud communications summit at IT Expo, and he was also the editor of the Cloud Communications 2010: State of the Art eBook, featuring work from twenty four thought leaders in next generation communications technology.

Thomas received his bachelor’s in Electrical Engineering at University of Massachusetts at Lowell, and attended graduate school at Northeastern University where he studied Digital Communications and Signal Processing. He currently serves on several technical advisory boards and boards of directors. Thomas currently resides in West Barnstable, Cape Cod, Massachusetts with his wife and four children.

Allen Allison is Vice President of Managed Services for NaviSite, Inc. Allen has been heavily involved in the information security industry for more than two decades. His accolades include co-architect of industry leading cloud computing platform; the chief engineer and developer for a market-leading Managed Security Operations Center; and, lead auditor and assessor for information security programs in the Healthcare, Government, e-Commerce, and Financial verticals. With more than twenty years of experience in the field of systems programming, network infrastructure design and deployment, and information security, Allen has earned the highest industry certifications including CCIE, CCSP, CISSP, MCSE, CCSE, INFOSEC Professional, and the NSA CNSS 4013. Allen earned his Bachelors Degree in Economics with an emphasis in business and finance from the University of California, Irvine.

Eric Hernaez is CEO of Netmobo, a company providing infrastructure-as-a-service solutions to mobile app developers. Eric was a founder of Solegy LLC, where his team built and deployed one of the first commercial IMS (Internet Multimedia Subsytem) implementations. Eric is also an advocate of open source software, and co-founded OpenSBC, a popular open source SIP Session Border Controller. Prior to Solegy, Eric held leadership positions in several innovative telecom and Internet start-ups including telic.net, Linkon Corporation and Sequel Communications.

Stefan Karapetkov is Emerging Technologies Director at Polycom, Inc. where he focuses on the audio and visual communication markets and technologies. He has MBA from Santa Clara University (USA) and an MS degree in Engineering from the University of Chemnitz (Germany). He has spent more than 14 years in the communication industry. His blog http://videonetworker.blogspot.com/ focuses on HD voice, HD video, unified communication and collaboration. Mr. Karapetkov has authored series of white papers and articles in trade publications, and has been frequent speaker at industry events.

Crick co-founded Ribbit on the simple premise that voice has value, and that value is in the application of voice. Where the convergence of computers and telephony has been ongoing for some years – the fusion of voice, computers, and applications is the new “value frontier” for telephony. Crick leads Ribbit’s strategy and business development bringing the new frontier of voice-enabled applications to developer, enterprise, and carrier markets.

Prior to starting Ribbit, Crick lead development and delivery of consumer voice and data services including fiber-to-the-home, VoIP, DSL, Wi-Fi, and voice over DSL services for AT&T Consumer Services.

Crick was Director of Value Added Services at NorthPoint Communications where he was responsible for creating services delivered over the company’s high speed data network. During his tenure, he launched one of the Nation’s first voice over DSL services.

Prior to NorthPoint, Crick was Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Applied Process Technology, a Silicon Valley company, where he brought this company’s innovation in water treatment technology to market. Crick has also held leadership positions at three separate divisions of International Paper in technology management, process and product development, and business management. Prior to his civilian life, Crick devoted seven years developing nuclear reactor instrumentation and control technology for the U.S. Navy’s fast attack submarine, U.S.S. Seawolf.

Crick has served on the Boards of Directors of the DSL Forum and the International Packet Communications Consortium.

He has B.S.E.E and M.B.A degrees from Duke University, and a M.S. in Nuclear Engineering.

Nitin Badjatia serves as Customer Experience Strategist, and is a member of the Social Center of Excellence at RightNow Technologies. In these roles, he works with RightNow clients to develop strategic initiatives to drive adoption of emerging technologies in their consumer-focused environments.

Prior to RightNow, Nitin has been an institutional banker, a technology advisor, and business strategist for nearly two decades. Based in Silicon Valley, he has worked in a wide range of areas including global banking, software delivery management, and business process re-engineering.

As a technology advisor, Nitin has worked for two leading enterprise software companies, Oracle Corporation and Siebel Systems. At both companies, Nitin assumed leadership roles in developing comprehensive software deployment strategies for customers. He also served as Director, Business Strategy for Knova Software, a customer support-centric knowledge management software vendor.

As a banker, Nitin has served as the Asia Analyst for Mellon Bank, and was responsible for underwriting sovereign risk for Asia and the Middle East. He has also served as an Officer in the Global Bank operations at NationsBank (Bank of America).

Nitin holds a Master of Public and International Affairs from the University of Pittsburgh, and has done graduate study at Columbia University on the impact of technology in organizations.

Ashish Soni is President & CTO of Ringio. Ashish is a highly accomplished expert in building high-availability, scalable, cloud computing systems, having managed more than 40 major software releases and the successful buildout of multiple high-availability data centers over the course of his career. Prior to Ringio, Ashish was VP of Technology & Operations at Angel.com. Ashish holds degrees in computer science from Albright College and Cornell University.

Jim Harari leads ShoreTel’s efforts in the managed solutions arena. Prior to joining ShoreTel, Jim held a number of senior positions within AT&T and companies that were acquired by AT&T. Jim’s roles were primarily in sales leadership in the equipment and services area where he most recently ran a 200 organization with revenue goals of $1B. Jim repeatedly demonstrated over his 15 year career within AT&T the ability to successfully lead organizations and grow margins.Jim has a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Lafayette College, and an M.B.A. from Duke University.

Paul Baron is the Vice President, North America for VideoMost, a subsidiary of Moscow headquartered SPIRIT Technologies. Based in Atlanta, GA., Paul is a Business and Partnership Development Professional representing technology companies seeking higher value solutions, customers and partners.

Paul was the founder and President of PAGE Telecomputing in 1994. PAGE was one of the original Computer/Telephony (CTI) software developers providing integration of large enterprise and SoHo telecom systems with customer database (CRM) applications. After the acquisition of PAGE in 1999, Paul began consulting to telecom vendors, carriers, and other communications software developers until joining SPIRIT in 2003. Since then, he has served as SPIRIT’s Business Development Director for US and worldwide customers. Today, Paul leads the introduction of VideoMost’s multi-party PC based voice and video conference solutions to service providers, application developers, and SaaS hosts seeking to deliver high margin cloud-based emerging IP services and solutions to their SMB and large enterprise customers and subscribers.

Paul has an MS - Mathematics education from the University of New Hampshire and a BS in Mathematics from the State University of New York. Paul also has more than four decades of entrepreneurial successes spanning retail, foodservice, sales consulting, software, and business & market development. He is an outstanding communicator, frequently called upon as an entertaining speaker and expert panelist at media and technology industry events and is a published author on a wide range of sales and technology topics.

As Chief Technology Officer and head of Operations, Sanjay Srinivasan is responsible for all Engineering, Product Development and Operations at Telesphere. Mr. Srinivasan comes to Telesphere with over 15 years of experience and expertise in the areas of data networks, voice services and hosted application services. He has served in all aspects pertaining to a service provider including network design, VoIP, software architecture and development, service provider process engineering, product marketing and development, and network and service operations. Prior to Telesphere, Mr. Srinivasan has served in various capacities with leading telecom companies like Hughes Network Systems, AT&T Wireless, Lightedge Solutions and Terabeam Corporation. At AT&T Wireless, he was one of the leading members of the team that successfully rolled out a fixed wireless residential product and integrated it successfully in to AT&Ts operations. With Terabeam, he was a leading member of the team responsible for rolling out of one of the first, native Ethernet/MPLS backbone networks in the country offering high-bandwidth metro-ethernet services to corporations. With the emergence of VoIP as a disruptive technology in the business communications sector, Mr. Srinivasan was responsible for rolling out and operating to scale one of the countrys leading Hosted VoIP PBX services. He has held educational seminars on the concept of Hosted IP PBX based services in various cities across the nation and has presented in conferences on the subject of VoIP. He is also responsible for rolling out Hosted Application and IT services focused on the Small-to-Medium business sector. Mr. Srinivasan holds a doctorate degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Virginia. He is a member of Engineering Honor societies such as Eta Kappa Nu and Tau Beta Pi. Mr. Srinivasan has published in refereed journals and conference proceedings.

Scott Wharton, Founder and CEO of Vidtel, Inc. has been recognized as a leader in the VoIP and video industry for nearly 15 years.

From 1999 to early 2008, he was the VP of Marketing at BroadSoft, Inc., the leading developer and marketer of VoIP application servers, which also handle video IP calling. Scott made significant and enduring contributions leading to: the dominance of the BroadSoft brand in the voice application space, the company’s acquisition of 9 of the world’s 10 largest telecom service providers as customers, and the expansion of the company’s presence in over 60 countries. Scott also defined a new product category for the telecom industry, a next-generation applications layer, establishing BroadSofts global leadership in the VoIP applications market.

In 2003, Scott was honored with the Frost & Sullivan IP Telephony Executive of the Year Award. It is presented each year to the individual who has excelled in developing and executing a business strategy allowing his or her company to gain market leadership. In 2006, Scott was recognized as a “Top 100 Voice” in the IP Communications Industry by Internet Telephony magazine.

Prior to BroadSoft, Scott was Vice President of Marketing at VocalTec Communications, the pioneer and a leading developer of VoIP software solutions. From 1995 to 1999, Scott spearheaded numerous groundbreaking initiatives, including the development of the first commercial VoIP product and the creation of the VoIP service provider industry. In the 1990s, Scott created one of the first IP video products for the consumer market as a senior marketing exec with VocalTec, the pioneering VoIP company.

Scott holds an MBA from Yale University.